The Tears Of Autumn

l

“Barney ordered me not to leave you,” Pong said. His eyes darted over the crowd in the narrow street outside Yu Lung’s house. There was enough light to see movement, but not enough to distinguish faces. Bicycles drifted by, and an occasional motor scooter sounded its horn, scattering pedestrians and cyclists as it plunged past the parked car.

“If you stay here with the car you’ll draw attention,” Christopher said. “Go somewhere else, and come by again at exactly nine o’clock. I’ll be here.”

A cyclist peered angrily through the windshield and hammered on the hood of the car.

Pong said, “Okay, nine o’clock. If you’re not here, I’ll come inside.”

He drove away through the crowd, touching the horn lightly in a series of Morse dots to clear the way ahead of him. Christopher was annoyed by Pong’s unnecessary noise. Then he realized it made no difference-secrecy was of no further use to him in Saigon.

Yu Lung’s house had a blind front except for a frame of carved wood, painted red, around the door. The lintel was low, and Christopher ducked his head to enter. A servant with a large flashlight showed him down a long hall to the back of the house. They walked past rooms filled with noise-plaintive Chinese music playing on a gramophone, loud voices, the beating of a spoon against a pot in the kitchen. But the hall itself was dead space. It was impossible to guess what sort of people lived behind the closed doors.

After the noise and the pungent smell of the house, Christopher did not expect to find Yu Lung looking as he did. The fortune-teller was a man of forty with a round prosperous belly under a checkered vest and a gold watch chain. He greeted Christopher not in a dim room hung with incense and calligraphy but in a brightly lighted office, sitting at a polished desk with gray-steel file cabinets behind him. There were two telephones and a photograph of his wife and her young children in a gold frame on the desk. Yu Lung rose from his chair with a smile and shook hands with Christopher. The pressure of his hand was firm and quick.

“Yu Lung,” he said. “You’re a friend of-who was it again?”

“Le Thu.” Christopher found himself smiling broadly-Yu Lung had made magic efficient.

Christopher took the torn halves of the five one-hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet and laid them on the desk. The Chinese produced his own portions of the torn bills from a desk drawer and spent a moment fitting them together on the glass top of his desk.

“Is the fee satisfactory?” Christopher asked.

“I’ve drawn the horoscopes for you,” Yu Lung said. He spread six sheets of rice paper over the top of the desk. On each sheet he had drawn a circle; symbols connected by lines lay within the circle. A vertical row of Chinese characters ran down the edge of each page. Yu Lung looked expectantly at Christopher.

“I’m afraid I can’t read these without assistance,” Christopher said.

Yu Lung nodded. “As you no doubt suspected, there is a remarkable conjunction of forces between the four men and the two dates you gave me. The fates are acting quite strongly on one other. Do you wish a classical interpretation, or a Vietnamese reading?”

“Vietnamese, to begin with,” Christopher said.

“I thought you might, so I’ve added the geomantic factors as well. Briefly, three of these men are either dead already or will be on”-he ran his finger down a lunar calendar- “the next conjunction of their forces, which will occur, in Western time, seven years from now on the dates you gave me for the events.”

He pushed aside the charts that he had drawn for Kennedy, Diem, and Nhu on the basis of their birth dates and times.

“This fourth man,” Yu Lung said, tapping the Truong toe’s chart, “is active in the fates of the others. I see no danger for him. You understand, you’ve asked me to work from very limited information.”

“I’m impressed with what you’ve done. How much faith have you in your results?”

“Well, you understand that the basis of horoscopy in our system is that the stars and all the other portents predispose rather than predetermine an individual’s fate. A man’s acts can alter his reading-in other words, he can avoid destruction through wisdom, or cheat himself of good fortune through stupidity. But the forces here are quite clear.”

“And the factors other than horoscopy?”

“Yes, the geomantic factors. You understand the principle of geomancy, of course-one orients oneself to the natural world on the basis of harmony with the five natural elements, which are fire, water, metal, wood, and earth. None of these three men seems to have been in harmony with the world. In Vietnamese terms, they were all under the influence of the Ma Than Vong.”

“Which is?”

“A very colorful and malevolent force-the tightening-knot ghost. Ma Than Vong goads men to suicide, or into situations where their violent death is inevitable. One of the men, this one-a foreigner, I believe-am I correct?”

Christopher nodded. Yu Lung had shown him Kennedy’s horoscope.

“The foreigner was a powerful man,” Yu Lung said, “but his particular nemesis was Ma A Phien, whom the Vietnamese call the opium ghost. This man was predisposed to a death in the pleasures. Also, he was much involved with the am, the female spirit that stands for darkness and is associated with death. As for the others, who must be Vietnamese, there was a long period of the influence of duong, or the male spirit of light, or life. Then this force conjoins with the am spirit of the other man, and they are lost.”

“By whose error?”

“Their own, of course. As I said, we are dealing with predisposition, not predetermination. The horoscope is incomplete, as you must realize.”

“Incomplete? In what way?”

“There are other individuals involved. One in particular, who I could guess is a Vietnamese related in some way to the other two. Perhaps he lives elsewhere than in the place where his two relatives live, or lived. He exerts a force after their death. It’s a key force. Without knowing his stars, you will not understand the others.”

Yu Lung rocked back in his swivel chair with a faint squeal of metal springs and folded his hands on his stomach. “Would you care for some tea,” he asked, “or a glass of scotch whiskey?” Yu Lung’s face was circular like his charts-a small pursed mouth, a broad nose that moved when he smiled, arched eyebrows.

“It’s the other man in whom I am interested,” Christopher said.

Yu Lung laughed. “I thought it might be. You haven’t the look of a man who pays five hundred dollars out of idle curiosity.” He pulled Scotch tape from a dispenser and stuck the torn American bills together. “Have you chosen between tea and scotch?” he asked.

“Nothing, thank you. I may say you work swiftly from very limited information.”

Yu Lung shrugged. “It’s a settled science. One learns the principles, and if one has the gift, the situation opens itself very quickly.”

“One would almost think that you had dealt with these particular horoscopes before.”

“Ah, perhaps,” Yu Lung said. “They are unique. All horoscopes are.”

“Then you’d remember if you had done them before?”

“Yes, I’d remember. You say you are a friend of Lê Thu. How did you come by that name?”

“By chance,” Christopher said, “though I suppose your philosophy would not accept that explanation.”

Yu Lung waved a pudgy hand. “Chance is an accurate word in your language. A geomancer would call it the function of feng shut-the geomantic conditions. What you’d describe as being in the right place at the right time. These beliefs are ancient. Your people once held to them, like everyone else. They’re preserved in your language, though you no longer hear the real meanings in what you say.”

“You know something of Lê Thu, do you not?”

“I?” Yu Lung said. “It’s a common Vietnamese name, quite a sad one-they might give it to a second child if the first had died, in order to discourage the bad spirits from taking this child as well.”

“I was also a friend of Vuong Van Luong,” Christopher said. “I believe you spoke to him a couple of nights ago.”

“Luong. Yes, he came here.”

“And asked about Lê Thu.”

“I could tell him nothing of importance.”

“He was shot dead after he left you,” Christopher said.

“Not for that name, I think,” Yu Lung said. He had a habit of widening his eyes when he lied. He held Christopher’s money in his hands, counting it over and over again.

“What are the ethics of your profession?” Christopher asked. “Your consultations are secret, I suppose.”

“Oh, yes, absolutely. These are intimate matters.”

“Do you keep records?”

“Of course. Clients come back. One keeps a complete profile of the case. Principles are fixed, but conditions change. One wants to see how forces have behaved in the past, so as to apply their logic to the future.”

Christopher smiled at the man. “What is the maximum period of time over which a horoscope may be kept?”

“It’s quite indefinite, but of course one can compute in terms of an adult lifetime. Thirty years. Say ten thousand days -that has a certain ring to it.”

“I should think five thousand days would give one a complete picture.”

“Fairly complete. Not all, but enough.”

Christopher put a thick envelope on Yu Lung’s desk. The fortune-teller kept his eye away from it. He drew one of the horoscope sheets toward him. With a red pencil he drew circles around groups of ideograms that ran down the edge of the paper. “The system I use is uniform,” he said. “The top group is the date, place, time of birth. The next group is the name of the individual, if I have it. All the Chinese characters below are the description of the individual’s fate. Do you see?”

“Yes.”

Yu Lung straightened the pages, squaring their edges by tapping them on the glass top of his desk. He went to his file cabinet, unlocked it, and inserted the papers in a file so that a corner protruded from the top. Christopher’s envelope still lay on the desk top.

“And now,” Yu Lung said, “I must insist that you take a glass of scotch with me. It’s quite an extraordinary bottle of Chivas Regal. I had it from a foreigner. I’ll fetch it, if you’ll be so kind as to wait.”

Yu Lung left the room. Christopher took the file folder from the open drawer of the steel cabinet and opened it. There were seven sheets of drawing paper in addition to the ones Yu Lung had prepared for him. Christopher used Yu Lung’s scissors to clip the ideograms from the edges of all the sheets. He put the long strips of rice paper, covered with Yu Lung’s flowing calligraphy, in his inside pocket, with Molly’s photograph. He closed the file and pushed in the lock.

Yu Lung, when he returned with the whiskey, did not glance at the file cabinet. He handed Christopher his glass before he poured whiskey into it, and smiled when Christopher held the empty tumbler up to the light.

“Will you spoil it with ice?” he asked.

Christopher shook his head. They touched glasses.

“You’ve spent a good deal of time in the East,” Yu Lung said. “You’ve learned our manners-you don’t make sudden noises or laugh in that peculiar way Europeans have. They guffaw and stare at one, expecting that one will put on an expression that exactly matches their own. One is not, after all, a mirror.”

“Living in Saigon has not made you into a Vietnamese, Yu Lung.”

“No,” Yu Lung said, “though I was born here, like my father. We Chinese who live abroad call ourselves hua-chiao. The words mean ‘sojourning Chinese.’ A sojourn is by definition temporary. One of our poets said we are like migrating birds with our souls flying ahead of us to China; we take no interest in our landing places or even in our journey-we beat our wings violently, in pursuit of our souls. Vietnam is where I live, my dear fellow-but it is not my world.”

Yu Lung widened his eyes in self-mockery. “I think one glass of scotch is quite enough for me,” he said.

Christopher’s envelope, containing fifty one-hundred-dollar bills, still lay untouched on the desk. Yu Lung had not acknowledged its existence. Christopher walked along the hallway behind Yu Lung. Outside Yu Lung’s bright modern office, they were back in China. When Yu Lung drew close to shake hands, he gave off the bitter unused smell of an old man.

2

Pong was late. Christopher crossed the street and stood with his back against the wall of a tin shack. Cyclists and pedestrians moved over the beaten earth of the street. No one turned a face in Christopher’s direction; he might have been as invisible as one of the spirits Yu Lung had spoken about. A new moon shone beyond the mist of Saigon’s lights.

Pong came into the street driving too fast, blinking the lights to clear people away from the car. As he reached Christopher, he threw open the front door and slowed only enough to let him scramble into the seat beside him. Pong’s eyes were fixed on the rear-view mirror.

“That gray Simca picked me up after I left you,” Pong said. “I lost them for a while, but you can’t hide this big car.”

“Do you think they’re still on you?”

“They were five minutes ago. They’ve got yellow headlights.”

Christopher looked out the rear window. “Go out to the quais and head west,” he said. “Let them find us.”

“We should go back to the house.”

“They’d be outside when we came out again. Let them follow.”

Pong turned the car toward the canals. The two-way radio crackled. Christopher switched it off. “Turn off the dashlights,” he said. “You may have to drive in the dark after a while.”

As they made the long curve where the Doi Canal turned south, yellowish light flashed from the mirror onto Pong’s face. “There they are,” he said.

“Keep going,” Christopher said. “When we get into the paddy, turn off the lights and drive fast. They can’t keep up.”

They were still within the city limits, but the car was racing through the swamps and paddy of the rural Seventh District, on the southwestern edge of Saigon.

“You know there are VC all over the Seventh District at night, don’t you?” Pong asked. He pulled his revolver from its holster and laid it gently on the seat between them.

“I know. How far to the first big curve, so you can stop without their seeing your brake lights?”

“Maybe two kilometers,” Pong said. “Just before the Cho Dem ferry.”

Pong switched off the headlights and trod on the accelerator. The car pulled itself into the darkness, swaying on its soft springs over the uneven roadbed. Pong cursed as a wheel ran off the pavement and threw a burst of clods against the inside of the fender.

“Barney says driving this car is like screwing a fat woman -you don’t know exactly where you are,” Pong said.

Christopher pulled the submachine gun off the dashboard and worked the action. “This is what we’re going to do,” he said. “Listen, because I only have time to tell you once.”

Pong listened. “Barney said no shooting,” he said.

“Barney’s not here,” Christopher said.

Midway through a long curve, Pong pulled the automatic transmission into low gear and turned off the key. The car bucked and ran down to a stop, Pong touching the brakes lightly only twice.

Christopher got out while the car was still moving. He lay down on the slimy earth between the road and the paddy; the Simca had turned off its lights, but he could hear its motor far back and see flashes of red as the driver braked to keep it on the road.

The Chevrolet, its lights still out, stood broadside on the pavement. Christopher saw the rice move near the Chevrolet as Pong waded into the paddy, his revolver held above his head.

The Simca came around the curve with its tires shrieking, swaying from side to side. The driver saw the Chevrolet at the last moment and switched on his lights. For some reason he sounded the horn, and in the glow of the instrument lights Christopher saw him pulling the steering wheel to the right, hand over hand like a falling man clawing at the face of a cliff. The Vietnamese in the passenger seat braced his feet against the dashboard, his teeth bared in fear.

The Simca flew for an instant after it left the road. Christopher had no real idea of its speed until it struck the paddy, sending a great sheet of water into the air. There were three sounds one after the other: the hard slap of the flying car on the surface of the paddy, the splash of water hitting the road and the parked Chevrolet, and a brief shriek of pain from inside the wrecked car. The Simca turned end over end and settled into the paddy on its top. Its yellow headlights shone over the water, then sank below it to glow among the stalks of rice for a moment before they went out. It was very quiet; Christopher heard water filling the car and, when that stopped, the faint rustle of the rice, disturbed by the wind.

Pong, wet to the waist, came out of the paddy with his pistol in his hand and stood at the edge of the road. Christopher stood up.

“I thought they hit you,” Pong said. He walked back and ran the toe of his sneaker, smeared with dark mud, along the skid marks.

Christopher waded through the paddy, still holding the submachine gun, and looked at the car. All four windows were under water. He beckoned Pong and together they rocked the car until it tipped over on its side. Pong opened the door; both men were crumpled together behind the wheel. He clambered onto the car, seized one of them by an arm, braced his feet against the door frame, and pulled the limp corpse out of the seat. He threw it into the paddy and pulled out the other body. Christopher helped him carry them through the water to the tar road, which was still soft from the afternoon sun.

Pong searched the bodies methodically, finding nothing but weapons and a little money. The man who had killed Luong had not attached the silencer to his.22; Pong found it in his trousers and held it up for Christopher to see. When he was done, Pong stood up and threw a handful of coins from the men’s pockets into the water. He started to roll the bodies back into the paddy.

“Wait,” Christopher said. “Do you have a camera in the car?”

Pong nodded and opened the trunk. He came back with a Polaroid camera, fitting a flashbulb into its reflector. He offered the camera to Christopher. “No,” Christopher said, “you do it.”

Pong knelt and took pictures of the dead men. The flashgun erased the shadows from their faces, so that they looked as Luong had looked, lying on his back with the morning sun shining into his extinguished eyes.

“Take two of each,” Christopher said.

3

At Luong’s house, the old woman who had given Christopher food that morning told him that Phuoc had gone away to pray. Christopher found him in the Xa Loi Pagoda, where the Ngos’ enemies had waited for arrest only a few weeks before. He sent Pong, a Buddhist, into the pagoda. Phuoc came out alone and got into the car without hesitation.

Phuoc looked at the submachine gun and the two-way radio and turned his body in the seat, watching Christopher’s profile. Christopher gave Phuoc the Polaroid photographs Pong had taken and turned on the interior light.

“These are the men,” Christopher said. He opened the glove compartment and brought out the long-barreled.22 pistol. “This is the gun.”

Phuoc examined the dead faces of his brother’s murderers. Christopher turned off the dome light.

“How did they die so quickly?” Phuoc asked.

“They drowned. It was an accident. I wanted to talk to them, but they went off the road and overturned in a paddy.”

“You wouldn’t have killed them?”

“No. I would have given them to you.”

Phuoc gave his sputtering laugh. “I see.”

“Do you know them?” Christopher asked.

“How should I know them? They look like boys.”

“So did Luong when I found him.”

“Tho.”

“All right, Tho,” Christopher said. “Phuoc, have you ever seen them? If you have, tell me.”

Phuoc slapped his palms together twice, sharply, in the dark. “Yes,” he said, “they were outside Yu Lung’s, drinking in the street when Tho and I came out the other night.”

“You went with him to Yu Lung’s?”

“Yes, I know Yu. His father taught me horoscopy.”

“Did you sit with Yu and your brother while they talked?”

“Yes,” Phuoc said, “but Yu said nothing of value. He wanted money, that’s why my brother was coming to find you. He thought you would have it.”

“What was Yu going to tell your brother in return for the money?”

“That wasn’t clear to me. Yu can talk like a fool when he wants. When Tho spoke about Le Thu, Yu became very alert. He talked about a voyage. Tears must be carried in a special vessel,’ Yu said.”

“What voyage? What vessel? He spoke to me in a very brisk way, like a French psychiatrist. Why should he talk to your brother in riddles?”

“I’ve known Yu since we were boys-he suits his approach to the client. He’s Chinese.”

“He said nothing more?”

“Oh, yes,” Phuoc said. “He leaned across his desk and whispered, ‘Five thousand dollars.’ Then we went away, Tho to get the money from you. I came here-I sleep nearby.”

Christopher touched the brake pedal twice, to signal Pong. Pong came out of the shadows, walking in a slight crouch, his head moving from side to side as if to catch a scent. Christopher was reminded of the drowned men, following him through the crowd in Cholon.

“I won’t see you again,” Christopher said.

Phuoc opened the door and seemed startled that his action bathed them in light. He still held the photographs in his hand; he glanced at them again before he closed the door, and gave them back to Christopher.

“One thing I know,” Phuoc said. “This Lê Thu-it was the death name of one of the Ngo women. She was killed in ‘54, by the French or the Viet Minh, no one ever knew which, as she was coming down from the North. The Viet Minh brought her child, a small girl, to the Ngos. Their Truong toe raised her. It’s said he loved her mother.”

“The child was Dao, the one who calls herself Nicole?”

“Yes, Dao. It means ‘peach blossom.’”

“Who was her father?”

Phuoc opened the door again. Sitting in the light with his face turned away, he said, “Do Minh Kha. Do went with the Viet Minh in the early days, and after they won, he gave up his wife to stay in Hanoi. She and all the other Ngos who were Catholics came south after Dienbienphu. The Truong toe had a great passion for this woman-Ho Chi Minh himself wrote a poem about it, how she had chosen a brave fighter over a rich man. Do chose the revolution over Lê Thu and the revolution killed her. So the Truong toe got the women he lost to Do after all-he keeps her altar, and he has her daughter.”

4

Christopher called Wolkowicz on the car radio and, speaking German, asked him to bring two things to their last meeting. An hour later, he found Wolkowicz waiting in his Mercedes on the Yen Do Road, near the airport.

Wolkowicz walked from his car to the Chevrolet and got into the back seat. When Christopher told him what had happened, he showed his teeth.

“What did you do with the bodies?”

“Put them back in the paddy.”

“The cops’ll think it was the VC.”

He handed Christopher an envelope. “Is this what you wanted?” he asked.

Christopher opened the envelope and looked at the photographs of Nicole and Do Minh Kha that Luong had taken in Vientiane.

“Yes. Thanks.”

“You’ve identified the girl, right?”

“Yes. She’s a relative of the Truong toe’s.”

“The chick you had lunch with?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the connection with Do?”

Christopher put the photograph back in its envelope. “She’s a courier,” he said.

Wolkowicz grunted. “All in the family. The generals would like to know that.”

“Do this for me,” Christopher said, handing Wolkowicz the envelope. He had addressed it to the Truong toe.

“I’ll mail it in the morning,” Wolkowicz said.

Christopher opened the car door. “Did you bring the Green Beret?” he asked.

“He’s in the Mercedes.”

Christopher walked to the other car and rapped sharply on the roof. Peggy McKinney’s brother, wearing khakis, got out. Planes flew overhead, descending toward the airport with then-landing lights on. Christopher had to shout above the noise of the jet engines.

“Come around in the headlights,” Christopher said.

He handed the boy the Polaroid pictures of his dead agents. The young captain crouched so that the light fell on the pictures. He wore a heavy Rolex watch and a West Point class ring. He was very slender in a sinewy way and he had his sister’s mannerisms: he held his body so as to display it to best advantage, but he had less control over his face.

Staring at Christopher, he stood up and held out the photographs. Christopher took them back. He handed him the pistols Pong had taken from Luong’s killers.

“You’ve lost your amateur status,” Christopher said.